This document provides a 3-part summary of the early history of Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) Inc., a company that began in 1978 developing healthcare software for minicomputers but ambitious grew to target the larger mainframe market dominated by IBM. The summary is:
HIS Inc. was founded in Brooklyn, NY by Barry Septimus and George Weinberger to develop a long-term care software system for Quantel minicomputers using BASIC. They found early success with over 20 installations. As hospitals asked for acute care features, George's programmers expanded the system. To target larger hospitals, they rewrote the software to run on IBM mainframes using PL/1, believing a translation program could convert much
2. Now Where Were We…
• Well, we’ve come to the end of our
minicomputer saga, this last episode telling
the tale of a daring young mini-based firm in
Brooklyn, NY, that had the temerity to think
they could grow into the mainframe market.
• Why? For the money, of course! Mainframes
sold to the largest hospitals who paid the
most for hardware and software, so every
vendor dreamed of selling to the big boys…
• And just who dominated the mainframe
market in the late 70s when minis first took
hold? If you remember our earlier episodes
on mainframes, there’s a simple, 1-word
answer you can see on the chart on the right
from Sheldon Dorenfest’s 1987 “Guide:”
3. Mainframe Software Vendors
• And who was writing code for these IBM
mainframes? A whole bevy of vendors vying for the
huge revenue opportunity of selling to the largest
hospitals willing to pay many millions to keep their
4300s running, and all developed at pioneering client
sites. The leaders:
– IBM itself offered software named after 2 of their
largest and most prestigious clients who built it:
• The Duke/Parkland System, which was
primarily a set of clinical apps that clients had
to customize heavily to meet their needs
– TDS – with superb MIS clinicals & pioneering CPOE
developed first at El Camino Hospital in CA
– Medicus – an HIS consulting firm who developed a
hot patient accounting software package called
4. An Unlikely Challenger
• The upstart little firm who challenged these far larger and more
proven vendors is an amazing HIS-tory in its own right.
• The firm’s name gives away their chutzpah: Healthcare
Information Systems, Inc., and was started by two of the
smartest and hard-working guys I ever met in the industry:
– Barry Septimus – chairman and super-salesman
– George Weinberger – president and super-techie
• They started HIS Inc. in 1978 selling a Long Term Care system that
ran on Quantel minicomputers, writing code in Basic
– (the Dartmouth “Quick-Basic” variety)
• They were aided by a 3rd
young HIS-hero name Gershon
Weintraub, who could demo the socks off of a bobby-soxer!
– “Geashon” (as his name was pronounced), did their early
installs, while Barry sold and George developed the code.
5. Early Success & Rapid Growth
• Working out of a brick corner building in the Borough Park section
of Brooklyn (with no air conditioning in the sweltering summers!),
HIS Inc. grew rapidly, selling & installing over 20 LTCs on their mini
systems, and growing the firm’s staff and annual revenue nicely.
• Many LTCs were owned by or affiliated with hospitals, who liked
the system so much they asked if HIS had any acute care
software?
• That was all the boys from Brooklyn had to hear! George’s
programmers took off expanding the LTC system to handle acute
care needs. Whatever prospects told Barry they needed, George
programmed it Sunday and Gershon installed in on Monday!• Soon Gershon was installing their new
hospital mini system all around NY city and
state, including such large & prestigious sites
as Westchester County Medical Center and
NYU right across the bridge in Manhattan!
6. Too Small for Their Britches
• NYU proved to be a real challenge, as the Quantel
minis were just not up to the huge volumes of a
such a large & complex major medical center.
• The software was plenty powerful, as HIS added a
full suite of general accounting (ERP to moderns)
applications and all the demands of NY billing.
• Plus, Barry was getting interest from more and
more large medical centers in NYC all of which
ran on IBM mainframes: 4300s, 303Xs or 308Xs.
• It didn’t take long for HIS to decide what they had
to do: re-write the Basic code to run on IBM
mainframes, whether older DOS or new MVS OS.
• George and his Tech VP and programming genius,
Harold Fischman, picked PL/1, ironically, written
in a NYC project lasting from 1965 to 1975.
7. A Brilliant Move!(?)
• Rather than start from scratch re-writing all the HIS programs in PL/1,
George and “Heshy” (Harold) decided on a brilliant approach:
– Translate the software from Basic to PL/1, by writing a translation
program that morphed the Basic code into PL/1 logic; where log
jams were encountered, then and only then would human
programmers jump in and write the needed PL/1 code.
– At a stroke (literally), they were off, coding their usual 12 hour
days and 6 day weeks (Saturday = Sabbath)
• Barry started thinking about the hundreds of
large IBM mainframe hospitals around the
country who were targets, and realized he
needed to hire a Director of Marketing who
knew the larger market outside of NYC
• And didn’t look and sound like a “New
Yahkah” to all those foreigners out West…
8. Fatal Flaw
• And it was here where these brilliant NYC
entrepreneurs made their one dumb mistake.
• I’ve tried to keep these episodes free of
personal prejudice, but I just have to state
that the man Barry & George picked is one of
the most pathetic names in the HIS industry:
– An ego as big as his mouth (huge!)
– With little or no brains to back it up
– With an insatiable hunger for the limelight
– Never knowing when to shut his trap
– And totally devoid of any morals
• This idiot almost sunk HIS’ ship single-
handedly with his poor sales management.
• Who was the jerk? Stay tuned next week…
